Applying for protection insurance with limited hearing

With limited hearing you might wonder how easy it might be to access things like life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection. At Cura we are continuously trying to find new ways to help our clients in a way which suits them best.

When applying for protection insurance, your application will generally follow the same route as someone that has full hearing, but there are ways that the journey can be adapted to your needs.

The application process

When someone first makes contact with us, we would usually get in touch by making a quick phone call to ask all of the questions we need to get the ball rolling and do the necessary research, so that we know which direction to go in with the application. Though this might be how we would normally do things, we can support you in other ways if speaking on the phone is not the best form of communication for you.

We have a lot of people that like to chat with us by email, whether they have full or limited hearing, as it can work quite well with the busy lives that many of us have. If this suits you then we can speak that way.

We can potentially do a video call if you want to. Whilst we do not have an adviser in the company that can speak in British Sign Language to the level needed to explain the insurance policies in detail, we can chat with you over video if you are able to lip read. It might be that upon reviewing your circumstances that we can place you with an insurer that offers access to SignLive, so that you can speak with someone that has specifically trained to communicate the details of the insurance policies in BSL.

For the application itself with some insurers it is possible for us to complete them online based upon information that you have shared with us, or you can potentially complete them online yourself, without having to go through a spoken application. We do usually like to go through the application with you to make sure that we can answer any questions that you have about what is being asked, but this is not essential.

Other than the initial conversation and completing the application, there aren’t usually many other points of the application process that would require a phone call, which makes things super easy. After the application, we usually contact people by email, text or letter to keep them updated throughout the process and let them know what stage we’re at.

When we are talking about accessing different insurance policies you are likely to find that the insurer will want to know the cause of your limited hearing. It might be that you were born with limited hearing, that it is a development as you have gotten older, or it could be linked to a medical condition e.g acoustic neuroma. The cause of your limited hearing or full deafness will then lead the insurer to make a decision about what terms that they can offer you.

In very generic terms you might see the following options for personal protection insurance, these are always based on your own personal circumstances:

• Life Insurance – no exclusions related to your hearing but potentially a higher premium depending upon the cause of your limited hearing
• Critical Illness Cover – likely to have a deafness exclusion, if deafness is a listed claimable condition, potentially a higher premium depending upon the cause of your limited hearing
• Income Protection – likely to have a deafness exclusion, if deafness is a listed claimable condition, potentially a higher premium depending upon the cause of your limited hearing
• Waiver of Premium – deafness exclusion
• Total Permanent Disability – deafness exclusion
  
  

These are based upon what is known as personal protection insurance policies. There can sometimes be options without exclusions for income protection, if you are able to look at group cover. This is a specialist area and you will need to speak to an adviser for support with this.

Whilst we would like to think we do best for our clients, we are always open to recommendations on how we might be able to improve the insurance application journey. Please feel free to contact us and find out how we can best support you in getting your life insurance, critical illness cover and income protection in place.

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